La Niña, westerly current
Lively Data : January 22, 2008
A La Niña episode is occuring in the Equatorial Pacific since the beginning of 2007. After an interruption in March-May 2007, this event continues during this early winter 2007-2008 (see bulletin El Niño) and is expected to continue until spring 2008. The Lively Data have often echoed the events El Niño / La Niña with maps of Sea Level Anomalies. The LAS also allows the visualization of this phenomenon in terms of geostrophic currents. The geostrophic current is divided into 2 components : the zonal component (called U) along the parallels (East-West) and the meridian component (called V) along the meridians (North-South).
La Niña conditions are particularly notable with the zonal component of current geostrophic (called U) at the end of fall 2007. The central equatorial pacific region is showing strong negative values, describing westerly geostrophic current. On the contrary, during the El Niño event in 2002, the zonal component of geostrophic current was marked by positive values, describing easterly current.
The Coriolis force (which is included in the calculation of geostrophic currents) is cancelled at the equator. To get around this problem, between latitudes 5°N and 5°S, current grids used in the Ssalto/Duacs products are estimated from Lagerloef and al. method.
Further information :
- Applications : El Niño, ENSO.
- Lively Data :
- February 17, 2006 : La Niña in sight
- November 27, 2006 : El Niño conditions to come
- October 18, 2004 : An El Niño this year?
- August 16, 2004 : El Niño on Novembers
- July 21, 2003 : Tracking El Niño
- Image of the month :
- November 1998 : From El Niño to La Niña ?
- December 1998 : El Niño behind rise in sea level
- December 2000 : Climate prediction systems cut their teeth on El Niño
- November 2002 : El Niño under close scrutinies
- January 2007 : El Niño on time for Christmas
- Lagerloef, G.S.E.; G.T. Mitchum, R.B. Lukas, P.P. Niiler, 1999: Tropical Pacific near-surface currents estimated from altimeter, wind, and drifter data, J. Geophys. Res., 104, 23313-23326.
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